The recent flurry of discussion about what is a blog seems to have yielded a fine definition courtesy of Greg Ritter: “A weblog is a collection of discrete, dated entries that are organized sequentially in time and published to the World Wide Web.” This definition is also a good way to pick up the topic of small-scale efforts at digitized text collections v. massive archival projects (sort of ELF v. the Million Book Project). What we are dealing with here is a kind of continuum having to do with the degree to which navigational paths are created by human beings on the one hand and the degree to which navigational paths are being automatically created by the computer.
| a few navigation paths which are data-driven | lots of navigation paths which are data-driven |
Static websites: we all know their limitations. I love my Mythology-Folklore website: it is a big, happy mess. But as a static website, that is all it can really aspire to be: a big happy mess. Now it is very much my happy mess - you can see “me” all over the place at that site, which means it is a great tool for me to use to teach a course online. But still: a mess.
Weblogs: hugely popular exactly because they do not require the user to create any navigational paths manually. You type into a box, or you even just send an email, and the content appears at your website. Now admittedly, many folks do amazing things with their weblogs in terms of interactive features, and even site design - but the key feature is that content can be arranged entirely automatically, sequentially, by date (and that is something a computer is very very good at).
Data-driven websites. There are so many amazing, even breath-taking database-driven websites out there, with enormous quantities of content: I really cannot imagine life without the Perseus Digital Library, for example. Because of the high-quality of the data tagging, there can be wonderful automatic navigational paths: a single Greek word can lead me to a Greek dictionary, which can lead me to a text of Homer, which can lead me to a commentary on Homer, which can lead me to an image of a Greek vase illustrating a scene in Homer, and from there to a map of the archaeological site where the vase was found… it’s stupendous. But it is also sometimes more than a mere mortal can handle…
Especially when that mere mortal is not an expert, and does not already have a sense of what they are looking for.
And that leads me to the empty fourth box: how are we going to combine the burgeoning content of database-driven websites with the wisdom of human beings who can create meaningful learning experiences online for students - students with all their strengths and all their not-yet-strengths…
Perseus is a good example of the dilemma that teachers are starting to face with these enormous (and enormously valuable) database-driven sites. The amazing Perseus has always been intimidating for novice users, and this is becoming more true the more data that is added to the system. More lexicons, more commentaries, Greek font display options, lemma mapping options: and how many of you out there know how you want to map your lemmas? Well, I am sure you would love Perseus anyway… even if you think that lemmas are little furry critters rumored to commit mass suicide periodically.
It’s a real paradox: the increasing amounts of data enhance the value of the site for scholars, while increasing the learning curve for novice users. When teaching Latin and Greek, I spend some time at the beginning of the semester trying to teach my students how to use Perseus for their needs as students - but I know that I barely scratch the surface. In fact, I’m learning new features of Perseus myself all the time! And I am constantly surprised by how little my students really understand about how to use Perseus. I’m sure everyone can think of comparable examples in their own fields… all those amazing wonderful database-driven websites that you make good use of but which are unfortunately very intimidating for novice users.
So let’s go back to the ELF for a minute - admittedly, it is lots of work for them, but it is so nice that their Dante site has different design features from their Chaucer site which has different design features from their Omar Khayyam site. And it was human beings who made those site design choices, based on their knowledge of the texts, the available data, and the kind of end user experience they wanted to create. Admittedly, the sites are recognizably similar (you can tell they are ELF sites) - and the designers are also making good use of some automated content management. Yet the wise designers have decided on behalf of the user just what features are available, and have carefully prepared that customized presentation for each of their chosen texts.
Obviously, people will continue to build better and better automated websites, increasing the sophistication of the database structures, the artificial intelligence factors in the design, so that interaction with the user is enhanced - with all kinds of users. But we sure do have a long way to go in that regard! And there will always be teachers, and students who need their help. How do we recreate the function of the teacher in these big database-driven sites so that they can mark out paths for their students - for any students - to follow?
And think about teachers: teachers are highly personal, idiosyncratic, eccentric, even weird! Some of the very best teachers are very weird folks. So how then do we create and sustain some highly personal, idiosyncratic, eccentric, even very weird paths meandering through these enormous digital libraries…?
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Great questions! We probably have to create databases of ..pathways to guide our navigation (it also fits nicely in your fourth box). But the question is how to collect as many of these pathways from ‘idiosyncratic, eccentric, even weird’ individuals. It doesn’t occur to people that something like this could be done. Computer output is predictable and uniform, but this doesn’t mean the (computer) input has to look and be as predictable and uniform.